Underground Music is making a comeback. And Daran Grant and Ian Greaves are hoping to make a huge impact for this Crop Over and beyond. The two have teamed up under Grants label Underground Music, to produce songs for young, upcoming artistes.
Grant and Greaves have been around the entertainment industry since the early 1990s, both achieving some amount of success during that time.
Grant, with Underground Music, has worked with some heavy weights like krosfyah and Rupee.
“Underground Music started as project between myself between Michael Agard from krosfyah. We did several tracks for krosfyah back in the day. We did some music with Trinidadians in the early days . . . a full album with Sherwin Winchester and we worked with Destra Garcia as well.
“As a company we recorded a lot of Crop Over music over the years. In 2002 there were quite a few tracks that did well such as Rupee’s Tempted To Touch that got him signed to Atlantic Records. We did a song called Proper Pork and also Loveable with Flexi . . . they all got a good rotation. That same year Edwin and I did the song Festival Fever,” Grant explained.
For Greaves: “I started in the music business from about 1990. First track I recorded was Hold Yuh Bam Bam by Speedy. Since then I have been doing albums and singles. In 1992, I had an album called Caribbean House Party which sold quite a few copies that year for World Records.
“Since then I have worked with many producers, Chris Allman, Nicholas Brancker and so on. I’ve worked with Daran before but we decided to collaborate as a team,” he said.
Today, the duo has joined up and are more than ready to showcase their collective talent.
Grant said he believed the new collaboration was brilliant since they were both skilled in unique areas.
“We decided to team up about three years ago. He is a writer, so I think it works well. I would say that a big problem in music is that we don’t have the writer and artiste link that always works well. You would have an artiste who has talent but can’t find a good song to sing. If a young artiste comes into the industry, they struggle. Song writing is very important. You would find people that write who also sing and are doing well for themselves, they have a tendency of not writing good songs for others. This is why we decided to link up. So we would have someone writing for the artiste without any issues,” he explained.
Greaves said he was excited about the link up and the work that they were going to do.
“It’s been very good. We would have our creative differences but that would happen in any good musical relationship. It’s a joy working with Daran. He has a knack for what sounds well and so on. We have not achieved what we wanted to as yet, but with hard work and dedication we will get there.”
“This is new for us working together, so we have to create that bond that helps us to go forward. We are looking for new talent. That has been one of the issues, finding people who can really sing and who want to succeed,” Greaves said.
So far, they have been working with young artistes Ashawnya and Poison.
Grant said things were going well.
“So, it has been going pretty good over the years in terms of helping the artistes and making a contribution to the Crop Over season. This year, it has been going pretty well. I, personally, wanted to do more songs. With Underground Music, we did like, 12 songs and that is nothing like the old days. It’s been going pretty ok, not like what I was accustomed to,” he added.
In terms of the overall music, the seasoned producer said he loved what he was hearing.
“I think the quality overall for Crop Over has increased. The standard overall is quite good. Yes, you would get some mediocre songs slipping though because anyone can record songs, but overall the songs are good,” he added. (DB)
